{"id":35878,"date":"2021-05-29T13:31:58","date_gmt":"2021-05-29T17:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=35878"},"modified":"2021-05-29T14:00:07","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T18:00:07","slug":"personal-frequency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/personal-frequency\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Find and Use Your Personal Frequency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What&#8217;s a personal frequency? How does Matthew McConaughey explore this topic in his memoir, <em>Greenlights<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In <em>Greenlights<\/em>, Matthew McConaughey explores the idea of personal frequency, a center of gravity that&#8217;s unique to you and helps you make the right choices. McConaughey says that personal frequency guides all your choices and helps you see the greenlights in front of you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more about Matthew McConaughey&#8217;s thoughts on personal frequency below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Discovering Your Personal Frequency<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Having grown up learning the outlaw logic of Jim and Kay McConaughey, and having failed his father\u2019s rite of passage, Matthew still needed to find his personal center of gravity and work out his independent identity. Events during and after his senior year of high school facilitated this transition when life itself, acting in concert with Matthew\u2019s free choices in the face of his life\u2019s inevitabilities, put him on the road to self-discovery. It was a road that led to a red sports car that stole his macho mojo, a year\u2019s stay in Australia with a family so weird they seemed right out of the Twilight Zone, and a second chance to establish his manhood in his father\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through his life experiences during this time, Matthew learned the following on his journey to find his personal frequency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Before you can find your real footing, you have to be thrown off balance. The first step in learning <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/your-genius\/\">who you are<\/a> is to learn who you aren\u2019t. Recognize and let go of the things in your life that don\u2019t resonate with you and don\u2019t feed your soul. What\u2019s left will be the real you.<\/li><li><strong>You have to discover your personal \u201cfrequency,\u201d your authentic core of identity, and hold onto it no matter what goes on around you.<\/strong><\/li><li>Being true to yourself can take different forms. Sometimes it can mean maintaining your moral center in chaotic circumstances. Other times it can mean breaking the rules to do what needs to be done.<\/li><li><strong>To have freedom, we need finite borders and boundaries.<\/strong> Only when we have some kind of order can we have a choice. (Notice the resonance of this insight with Part 1\u2019s lesson about the necessity of structure.) When you deliberately get rid of everything that causes a kind of \u201cexistential friction\u201d\u2014everything that doesn\u2019t sit right with you in your spirit\u2014this automatically creates order and gives you direction.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Pickup Trucks and Red Sports Cars<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Matthew caught plenty of greenlights during his senior year of high school. He also experienced a major lesson about learning who you are by learning who you aren\u2019t. This is all a part of finding your personal frequency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He earned straight A\u2019s while holding down a job that kept him in cash. He excelled at golf, enjoyed parties, and dated both the prettiest girl at his high school and the prettiest girl at the other school across town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A major part of his identity was his pickup truck. He enjoyed taking girls off-road mudding in it (driving through muddy creek beds). He had a megaphone in the truck\u2019s front grill and delighted in using it to offer commentary on passing girls at school, which in turn delighted them. Everybody loved his truck and him with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then he fell in love with a red 300ZS that he saw on sale at the local Nissan dealership. On the spur of the moment, he traded in his truck for the car and became convinced that girls would dig him all the more because of it. Now his jam at school was to park in the farthest lot (to prevent door dings) and lean against the side of his car, being cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in fact, his new car had the opposite effect. Girls started ignoring him and going mudding with other guys. It wasn\u2019t long before he had learned his lesson. He traded the car back in for his truck, and in regaining his truck, he regained his mojo. <strong>He had briefly gotten too caught up in looking cool instead of being real, and he had paid the price.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s a personal frequency? How does Matthew McConaughey explore this topic in his memoir, Greenlights? In Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey explores the idea of personal frequency, a center of gravity that&#8217;s unique to you and helps you make the right choices. McConaughey says that personal frequency guides all your choices and helps you see the greenlights in front of you. Read more about Matthew McConaughey&#8217;s thoughts on personal frequency below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,6],"tags":[292],"class_list":["post-35878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-self-improvement","category-spiritual","tag-greenlights","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How to Find and Use Your Personal Frequency - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey talks about personal frequency. 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